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Marina Gorbis's blog
Horror of horrors—I am finally done with newspapers
What did it? Twitter. O.k., I may be late to the game, many people I know have stopped reading newspapers a long time ago. By newspapers I mean their physical incarnations. Many of my colleagues and friends have turned to online news sites, magazines, and blogs. For me, however, these somehow didn’t provide a good substitute for the “real” thing, particularly as the “real” thing was such a big part of my morning “news with coffee” ritual. Even when I stopped reading the New York Times in the morning for news, I still read it for feature articles and deep analysis. T
Welcome to Digital Mobs
A husband writes an impassioned letter on one of the popular Internet bulletin boards denouncing a college student he suspects of having an affair with his wife. Immediately, throngs of people join in the attack, and within days the numbers grow to tens of thousands, with “teams of strangers hunting down the student, hounding him out of his university, and causing the family to barricade themselves inside the home." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/03/.
Lightweight R&D Infrastructure
Interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker about Nathan Myhrvold, former CTO of Microsoft, and his company called Intellectual Ventures http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell/?cu.... First, having just spent a few days working with Nathan, I found the following description of him hilarious:
Maker Faire: It's About Rethinking Assumptions
Maker Faire opened today with a Maker Day—a time for Makers to meet each other and showcase some of their cool projects. As I was listening to Umberto Crenca, one of the founders of AS220, a non-profit arts center in Providence, RI, that provides spaces for different types of media artists and performers, it occurred to me that the Faire is not just about seeing great DIY projects, it is about much more; it is about breaking established modes of thinking, established approaches to living, working, organizing.
Me Media
Earlier today, my colleague, Anthony Townsend, sent a note to Technology team members letting us know that he has started using a private del.icio.us account to keep his stuff “better organized and to use it for personal bookmarks” (this in addition to IFTF del.icio.us account that serves as a collective bookmarking site for everyone at IFTF. I've been using a private del.icio.us account for my stuff for a while, for the same reasons as Anthony. Others chimed in to say they also do this.
My Roomba Moment
Standing in the middle of my living room surveying the floors covered with crumbs left over from last night's seder, I finally decided—this is the Roomba moment!
Identity Management for Kids
Reading today's article in the New York Times about potential employers and college admissions people going through Myspace and Friendster sites to get information on applicants (For Some, Online Persona Undermines a Resume), made me think how ironic it is that in the world where everyone can have a public persona, i.e. be a celeb, one also carries the burden of having to "manage" this persona just like a celebrity.
Nine Technology Filters
For our next Tech Horizons exchange, Mike Love and I have been reviewing lots of our old technology forecasts and reports. I won't reveal some of the really "juicy" stuff we've been looking at (you will have to wait until the exchange) but one piece of work we came across caught my attention. In 1997, the team came up with 9 filters for evaluating new technologies and identifying technologies that are important to look at. These include:
Gene Manipulation Makes Meek Mice Fearless
Here is another possible tool to add to the repertoir of body extension tools we discussed at the last Tech Horizons exchange. A recent article in New Scientistreports that deactivating the gene that codes for the protein stathmin transforms meek mice into daredevils. According to the article:
